Evert and Navratilova: The Immortal Doubles Team

photo: Marvin Joseph

This coming Saturday, tennis fans tune in for “Breakfast at Wimbledon” to feast on the Women’s Championship played on famed Centre Court. White lines and tennis clothes, fresh strawberries and cream, worn grass and pageantry. During their 15-year rivalry, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova often met on this Saturday—Evert a 10-time finalist with three titles, Navratilova a 12-time finalist with nine winner’s trophies. Both champs currently serve at Wimbledon from the broadcast booth.

Evert retired in 1989 and Navratilova in 1994, each with 18 Grand Slam (Wimbledon, Australian, French, US Opens) titles. This duo wins their sweetest match right now, however, fighting together against a nasty foe. Sally Jenkins takes journalism on a soaring flight in her article in the July 2 Washington Post, “Bitter Rivals, Beloved Friends, Survivors: After 50 years, tennis icons Evert and Navratilova knew where to turn when cancer hit: Each Other.” A reporter since 1984, Jenkins attended some of the matches she details. Accompanying photographs, video highlights, and interviews teach lessons, too.

After her masterpiece, billed a “Deep Read” in the Post, published to rave on and on reviews, Jenkins stated: “The story of this beautiful friendship is the richest subject I ever had the privilege of covering.” Her friend Martina: “Sally’s writing is pure magic. I mean the subject was cool, but the way Sally put it all together so beautifully – wow.” Their friend Chris: “Sally, I love you. Martina, I love you.” Still hitting aces, the doubles team scores points everywhere their story travels.

Opening day at Wimbledon buzzes with a field of 128 players, the thwock-thwock of racquets meeting balls meshing with the pop-pop of corks (but not during serves, please) exiting champagne bottles. On Championship Saturday, before and after the finals match, only two players remain in the locker room. “No one else could possibly understand it. Except for the other. She knew me better than I knew me,” Navratilova explains to Jenkins. Their intense competitiveness, grit and desire—a first for women players—dealt/deals sexism knockout blows. These champions set girls free.

How did Evert and Navratilova reach the pinnacle of their sport? Who are they, really, these women whose childhoods choked on restricted freedom and little fun? Evert’s father and coach demanded unquestioned devotion: “I was raised in a home that did not encourage relationships. It was a fearful sort of upbringing.” A “squinteyed, firm-chinned executioner who delivered strokes like milled steel” and compiled an unimaginable .900 career winning percentage, Evert nevertheless masked insecurity and anxiety. Growing up in Czechoslovakia, Navratilova was suppressed by Communist doctrine and her closeted (until 1981) homosexuality. Defecting to the US in 1975, homesick and lonely, she learned English by watching reruns of “I Love Lucy.” Paying a steep financial and emotional price for her honest lifestyle, Navratilova elevated women’s tennis with “acrobatic suppleness” and “airborne ease.” And she rejected unsought advice to invite a man to sit (that is, to pose) in her Wimbledon spectator’s box. You can guess who always had her back, fighting homophobia by her side at every ugly turn.

photo: Jacqueline Duvoisin

The friendship survived fraught ups and downs in its whirlwind early years, their reciprocal warmth and kindness eventually defeating off-court interference. Navratilova remembers that they were “always underestimated in our empathy,” and the duo celebrated their rise to the top as a joint accomplishment. Each athlete forced the best, and then more, from the other’s game. Evert won the 1985 French Open 6-3, 6-7 (7-4), 7-5, one of their most flashy duels: “The embrace at the net is one of their enduringly favorite pictures. They threw their arms over each other’s shoulders, mutually exhausted yet beaming over the quality of the tennis they had just played. You couldn’t tell who won.” Confidantes nurturing their steady friendship over the years, Evert and Navratilova suited up for their biggest challenge in 2022.

“When I called her it was a feeling of, like, coming home.” Diagnosed with cancer in January of last year, Evert rang Navratilova’s number right away because “I can tell her my fears. I can be 100% honest with her.” Through grueling treatments and surgeries, her partner stood tall with her. In December, Evert returned her friend’s worrisome message immediately. “I’m scared,” Navratilova confessed, readying for her own debilitating battle against two kinds of cancer. Navratilova counted on their “cosmic connection,” amazed that Evert somehow knew just when to call. Sometimes wordless communication bound them tightest. Breathing together.

Wimbledon. July, 2023. Chris and Martina—in the broadcast booth, locker rooms, and mingling in the stands—at the top of their games. They embody, Jenkins sums up, “the deep internal mutual grace called sportsmanship.”

Game. Set. Match.

Sit with this miracle: “Your life is your life.” All yours, only yours. Stand with this miracle. Your life belongs to you. Stretch with this miracle. Time to live life now. “Be on the watch,” Charles Bukowski prods, and when you catch a glimmer of light, chase it. Can you make your own heart “The Laughing Heart” fashioned by the poet? Yes, yes you can—the instant you know that “you are marvelous.”

“I prefer talking to doctors about something else,” Wislawa Szymborska understands. She selects her preferences from plenty of “Possibilities.” Fairy tales rather than front page news, daily rather than annual toasts to love, the color green and chaos and cats. And likely the Nobel Prize poet’s tastiest food for thought: “I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.” Green fairy tales—love toasts today.

The most important thing that you can do for yourself—the one thing that nobody can do for you? “Love Yourself,” Joy Clark sings, strumming her blue guitar. She welcomes back her 12-year-old self, willing that girl to “choose who I’m going to be.” C’mon, jumpstart those days when you listened to your heart. Clark tells her back-then and right-now self: “You are so perfect.”

Uh-huh, “I just might have a problem that you’ll understand.” Chris wings this Bill Withers tune to exhausted Martina, laying love overtop Martina’s fear. “God, I’m such a softie,” weeping Martina admits, cherishing the song. Who better knows Martina’s “pain and sorrow?” From a distance, Chris shoulders close and stays. “Lean On Me.”

Martina and Chris

thirty-six Grand Slam triumphs

saved their best for last

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